Fontana Chamber Arts

A specific question has been on the minds of a lot of people in the Kalamazoo arts community lately: What happens when the media changes, and arts coverage from the local newspaper shrinks in just a few short years? The shift has happened fast in Kalamazoo. Now, arts leaders have a plan to collaborate on a new arts publication. Its purpose: to serve as a hub for listings, reviews and arts features for Southwest Michigan.

A trio of talented teens takes over the Kalamazoo Nature Center Barn for a rootsy beginning to the 2015 Fontana Summer Festival this Saturday. Sleepy Man -Tommy, Robbie and Jonny Mizzone on guitar, fiddle/vocals and banjo - came to fame not with an agent or an album, but rather a viral video.

Trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis's musicianship was born of a longstanding New Orleans tradition: older generations playing side-by-side with younger generations. Mr. Marsalis recently stepped away from his usual role as record producer to get in front of the microphones with his father, Ellis Marsalis, for an album called The Last Southern Gentlemen. Both Delfeayo and Ellis Marsalis will appear on the Fontana series Friday night.

Garrick Ohlsson's reputation as a great artist was established at the 1970 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland, when he became the first American to win the gold medal. Fontana director David Baldwin, who managed Ohlsson's European concerts when he was a talent agent for ICM, says he is still revered throughout the former Eastern Bloc countries for his dedication to performing there during the Cold War.